


Bodies In Contact

by kutubiyya



Series: Distractions and Complications [2]
Category: Cricket RPF
Genre: Angst, Consensual Kink, Food Fight, Infidelity, M/M, Smut, Switching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-07-29 09:29:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7679161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kutubiyya/pseuds/kutubiyya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“Oh, really.” Jimmy draws himself up. “</i>That’s<i> how you want to play this?”</i></p><p> <i>Ali shrugs. His eyes are bright. “Winning too easily… bit boring, you know.”</i></p><p>
  <i>Jimmy grins. “Bring it on, masterchef.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>And this, in a nutshell, is how they end up having a food fight in the kitchens at Lord’s.</i>
</p><p>--</p><p>A charity dinner at Lord's offers Jimmy and Alastair chance to cut loose a little after the stresses of the summer season. But Jimmy knows they need to keep a lid on things around Broady - and Alastair's just trying to keep a lid on his feelings.</p><p>Chance to Dine, Lord's, 17th-18th September 2014.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_So tell me again: what am I feeling?_  
_You know me so well, so what am I feeling?_  
_And how can you tell? I've got a feeling_  
_You don’t know_  
\--Tom McRae, ‘Bloodless’  
([lyrics](http://www.lyricsfreak.com/t/tom+mcrae/bloodless_20138438.html); [listen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9euM79RRQU))

 

\--

 

Jimmy is all set to be sensible, when he arrives at Lord’s for Chance to Dine.

Yeah. Well. Best laid plans, and all that.

Still, he really _is_. It’s been a month, more or less, since he last saw Broady, what with his new-ball partner having missed the ODI series for a knee operation. But this doesn’t mean Broady has forgotten the fifth Test – or, more particularly, that Broady’s forgotten the night _before_ the fifth Test, when he caught Jimmy about to let himself into Ali’s room with no shirt on.

It isn’t really the sort of thing you forget.

So: if Jimmy and Ali are going to pass an afternoon and an evening in the company of Broady – plus Hoggy, Mark Nicholas, a cluster of actual chefs, and a camera crew for Waitrose – without attracting any more attention, Jimmy knows they need to play it completely straight.

Swanny, it occurs to him, would be smirking at that inadvertent pun. But Swanny isn’t here, and he isn’t going to hear it. Jimmy’s almost certain Ali still hasn’t spoken to Swanny since the latter’s remarks in the press about the ODI captaincy, and Jimmy’s own recent, slightly strained conversations with his best friend have steered carefully around any mention of Ali. Jimmy wants to talk to Ali about this (knows the situation will be eating at Ali, even if he’s too stubborn to admit it, and knows, too, how much the other man needs a friend who can make him laugh), but he can’t think how to start.

Back to the more immediate issue. The problem (one of the problems) with being sensible is that it’s two weeks since the ODI series finished, and text messages aren’t much substitute for the real thing. Especially when the real thing, two minutes after arriving and being handed a Chance to Dine-branded chef’s jacket, is hauling his pale blue polo shirt up over his head with scant regard for sensibleness. The part of Jimmy’s anatomy that doesn’t give a shit about being sensible chooses this moment to point out that the two weeks apart haven’t blunted the appeal of Ali’s chest. Or his arms.

Far from it.

Hoggy chuckles. “Doing a little strip-tease for us, Cooky?”

“Uh…” Ali’s gaze flickers in Jimmy’s direction; his smile’s abashed. “Thought I’d be too warm in the kitchen, otherwise.” He pulls on the short, white jacket with some haste.

Broady, balanced on crutches somewhere behind Jimmy, clears his throat. Jimmy makes a point of not looking at him.

Hoggy and Broady file out, leading the way to the kitchen. Jimmy catches up with Ali near the doorway, slips a hand up inside the other man’s jacket – the things are flared below the waist, offering easy access for wandering hands, how thoughtful – and rakes his nails across Ali’s skin as he lets his momentum carry him past. “Approve of this,” Jimmy says, catching the other man’s gaze for a moment before turning back to the direction he’s heading – only to discover that he’s misjudged his trajectory, and his face is about two inches from the doorframe.

He yelps, and throws up an arm to check himself before he can smack right into the wood.

Ali snorts. “Smooth. And you call _me_ ridiculous.”

Jimmy braces himself against the doorframe, laughing helplessly. An unseen hand slides up his back, comes to rest on one shoulder; lips press against the nape of his neck. Jimmy looks up, quickly, but the corridor ahead of them is empty, now. He knows he should say something about Broady, about being careful, but he’s reluctant (still) to own up to getting caught shirtless and brazen at Ali’s door.

Instead, he turns; leans back against the doorframe. “Apparently we’re both ridiculous.”

Ali’s lips quirk. “Yeah, only one of us was so busy staring he nearly walked into a wall.”

“That’s because _you_ ” –Jimmy reaches up to pat Ali’s cheek, teasingly— “are ridiculously beautiful.”

Ali rolls his eyes. Jimmy has just enough time to see the skin under his fingers go a pleasant shade of pink before Ali moves in to smother his smirk under a kiss. Jimmy doesn’t feel the slightest bit guilty; he hasn’t seen Ali blush in two whole weeks, and a kiss was what he wanted, anyway.

When they’re done, it’s Ali who looks away first. “So. What culinary delights have you got in store for us today?”

Jimmy lets the hand caressing Ali’s cheek drop away. “Chorley cake.”

Ali looks puzzled. “What’s that?”

 _Bloody southeners_ , Jimmy thinks. “You’ll see. And chocolate truffles, because, well. You’re doing game, aren’t you?”

Ali grimaces. “Changed my mind. Long story. Cheese and onion tart, now.”

“Cheese and _onion_ …” Jimmy tuts, shaking his head. “You remember this is a competition, right? It’s like you’re surrendering before we’ve even started.”

Head tilt; smirk. “Well, I wanted to give you guys a head start. Since I’ve won this thing the last two years in a row.”

“Oh, _really_.” Jimmy draws himself up. “ _That’s_ how you want to play this?”

Ali shrugs. His eyes are bright. “Winning too easily… bit boring, you know.”

Jimmy grins. “Bring it on, masterchef.”

And this, in a nutshell, is how they end up having a food fight in the kitchens at Lord’s.

\--

Ali’s still loudly mocking Jimmy as they walk through the doors. He stops, mid-word, when everyone turns to look at them, dropping his head with an embarrassed grin, and for a moment it’s like they’re a pair of naughty schoolboys. Then the others go back to their preparations, and Ali catches Jimmy’s eye and bites his bottom lip.

At which point, Jimmy’s done for.

Risky flirting has always given him a buzz, anyway, and there’s an end-of-term feel to today, with the highs and lows of the summer’s cricket behind them and two months until the next tour starts: no more training, no more kit, no more media, no more stress; just knocking about a kitchen in jeans, pretending to be chefs. Jimmy knows there’s a good chance Broady’s watching, plus there’s that camera crew, but he feels sort of giddy and invincible and really, teammates are supposed to take the piss out of each other, aren’t they?

So for the next hour or so, to the accompaniment of a couple of beers (Jimmy) and a glass or two of wine (Ali), the pair of them do quite a lot of strolling up and down the kitchen, accidentally jostling elbows at key moments and peering sceptically at each other’s efforts with remarks like, _Oh, it’s a cake; I thought it was for clay pigeon shooting_ and _Be a shame if someone turned the oven all the way up_ and _Is it supposed to smell like that?_

Hoggy laughs at them from time to time, but mostly he occupies himself with his own food and grilling the actual chefs for tips. Broady, meanwhile, seems to be too busy agonising over how to daub his initials across the plates bearing his scallops to watch what they’re up to. Jimmy declares Broady’s food to be fussy rubbish, on general principle and in an effort to make it look like he isn’t just focusing on Ali.

Then a bit of raw onion lands on Jimmy’s baking tray, and he knows exactly who’s responsible. _Brat_ , he thinks, happily, as he slings the onion back in Ali’s direction.

There’s a certain inevitability to how things go after this, especially when Jimmy takes a break from bending over his baking to stretch out his back, and Ali calls out, “Broady, any chance old man Jim can borrow your crutches for a bit?”

Jimmy narrows his eyes, but holds his tongue; when Ali isn’t looking, he assembles a small pile of flour in his palm and ambles up behind the other man.

(See how _he_ likes grey hair.)

“Oh, hey – Cooky, quick question…” he says, and as Ali turns, Jimmy blows the flour right in Ali’s face. He cackles all the way back to his Chorley cakes.

Watching out of the corner of his eye as Ali wipes his face with a wet cloth gives Jimmy all too many ideas, especially once he starts whipping up the ingredients for his truffles. It’s only a short step from there, really – a short step, the rest of his current bottle of lager, and ignoring the pair of cheese cubes that come sailing his way in the meantime – to a bigger stunt. While Ali’s explaining the finer points of his cheese and onion tart technique to Mark Nicholas and the camera crew, Jimmy stealthily loads up on melted truffle mixture, sneaks up behind them all, and lunges forward to smear two wide streaks of chocolate across Ali’s face.

Yelps; laughter; a chocolate-coated, ruefully resigned expression from Ali. “You win,” he murmurs, when they get a moment out of earshot. Then, pitched for everyone to hear, “I’m going to go wash my face.”

The glance he gives Jimmy is probably the most blatant invitation Jimmy’s ever had. Jimmy waits as long as he can before following.

\--

Alastair’s just started to fill the sink with warm water – grinning at his flushed, chocolate-adorned face in the mirror – when the bathroom door slams open and Jimmy strides in.

No words; no pause to check if the room’s empty. Just Alastair being barrelled into a stall and shoved up against the partition wall, in a move somewhere between a kiss and a rugby tackle.

Alastair melts into the hold, accepting Jimmy’s force and returning it, without making any serious effort to extricate himself from the body pinning him, the hands exploring him; the thigh pushing between his legs.

“Tell me,” Jimmy mutters, when they finally pause for breath, “if you want me to slow down.”

Alastair laughs, unsteadily, as Jimmy kisses a slightly hectic path along his jaw. “When have I _ever_ wanted you to slow down?” He’s light-headed, isn’t sure if it’s from the wine or from Jimmy. “I’m always up for being manhandled, you know that.”

“Whenever you want.” Alastair feels Jimmy’s breath on his cheek; his lips closing in. “Just ask.”

Jimmy’s tongue darts out to taste the chocolate on Alastair’s cheek; his hands slide up Alastair’s body. Fingers hook around the collar of Alastair’s chef’s jacket, and in a single, sharp motion, Jimmy yanks the thing open almost as far as Alastair’s waist.

Alastair catches his breath, heat shooting through him. “New level manhandling.”

“Always wanted to do that to someone.” Jimmy looks half sheepish, half smug. “And, you know” –he waves a hand at the double-breasted flaps of the jacket, now lying open across Alastair’s bare chest— “only held together with press studs. Practically _designed_ for this.”

A trickling noise that’s been on the edge of Alastair’s hearing for a while finally worms its way to his attention. He's almost glad of the respite; a chance to pause before he's completely swept away. “Shit. Tap.”

Jimmy shrugs, closing in for another kiss.

Alastair gives him a push. “Go on, turn it off. I’m not going anywhere.”

Jimmy sighs, but does as he’s told.

Far from calming Alastair down, though, the pause really only heats things up. He’s thinking about what Jimmy just did, about what he said – _always wanted to do that_ – and can’t help but imagine how to push the fantasy further. By the time Jimmy steps back inside the stall – locking the door, this time, behind him – Alastair has sunk back against the partition wall and pulled his jacket the rest of the way open, letting it fall either side of his hips, leaving him bare from neck to waistband. In a last-second inspiration, he’s shoved his hands in his pockets to pull his jeans tight across his groin (not just unsubtly, but shamelessly), and now he’s feeling more than a little ridiculous. His heart is thudding as Jimmy turns – then it skips, at the look on Jimmy’s face.

The other man stops, staring, mouth open a little way. When he steps forward again, he’s shaking his head, muttering, “What did I ever do to deserve…?”

“Want the list?” says Alastair, and somewhere between thought and tongue, the remark loses its suggestive edge, comes out more earnest than he means it to.

Doesn’t matter; Jimmy’s mouth is back over his own before he can undo the words, and Jimmy’s hand’s pressing in hard over his jeans. Alastair groans into the kiss, pulls Jimmy in tighter, wanting as much contact as possible. For a while, everything is rising heat and gasping breath and grabbing, demanding touch; that, plus the rich, bitter taste of chocolate on Jimmy’s tongue, the scent of it between them as Jimmy samples more and more. Then Alastair feels a different sort of touch: a curled finger sliding down his cheek, scooping up chocolate as it goes.

Jimmy flashes a grin; smears the chocolate across Alastair’s chest. Dips his head and starts to lick it off.

Alastair lets his head drop back against the wall, closes his eyes, swallows hard; lets himself drift amid the sensations of Jimmy’s lips and tongue playing lazily across his skin, lets his own hands caress anywhere he can reach. The teeth toying with one of his nipples bring him back to the moment, and he looks down with a soft noise of not-quite-protest, catching Jimmy’s gleeful gaze.

“Enjoying yourself?”

Jimmy makes a show of licking away the last of the chocolate from just beneath Alastair’s collar bone. “Icing on the cake.”

Alastair groans. “With lines that bad, it’s a wonder you ever managed to charm me into bed.”

“Not much charm involved. Mostly persistence and _this_.”

Jimmy’s hand is abruptly back at Alastair’s groin, making it tricky to come up with a response, and Alastair decides he’s tired, now, of feeling denim rather than skin under his own hands; holding Jimmy’s gaze, as the other man bites down a little harder on a nipple, Alastair pops the button on Jimmy’s trousers and goes straight for what he wants.

When Alastair’s hand closes around Jimmy’s cock, Jimmy draws in a long breath, and straightens up; delivers a low chuckle into Alastair’s ear. “Not really got time, have we?”

Jimmy doesn’t stop him, though; doesn’t move away.

And Alastair isn’t ready to go back to the kitchen, yet.

He checks his watch, which is – luckily – on the wrist not currently shoved inside Jimmy’s pants. “Ten minutes until my tarts need to come out of the oven. Plenty of time.”

He tries a slow squeeze, listens for the tiny tell-tale hitch in the other man’s breath. Gets it.

A faint sigh. “How can I resist?”

Alastair grins. “Maybe you don’t want to.”

There’s a fractional, unreadable hesitation before Jimmy leers. “I’ve created a monster.”

“Oh, really.” Alastair raises his eyebrows. “Remind me again who just spread chocolate on whose chest?”

“Details.” Jimmy shifts, pushing his trousers and pants down far enough to give Alastair room to work. Then he crowds Alastair more firmly back against the partition wall, one of his hands settling at Alastair’s hip while the other slides around Alastair’s neck, up into his hair. His fingers curl into a tight grip, pulling Alastair’s head back.

Keeping up rhythm and pressure, down below, is tricky like this – with the heat and bristle of Jimmy’s stubble-flecked jaw nuzzling his throat – but Alastair battles through, and he’s rewarded with an urgent, grunting kiss.

“What would you do?” he says, when Jimmy moves back to the chocolate on his cheek. “If we had as much time as we wanted. And everything we needed. What would you do to me?”

Jimmy looks surprised, briefly; not half as surprised as Alastair feels. This is the sort of thing he sometimes imagines saying – an encouragement, a brazen invitation, _tell me how much you want to fuck me_ – but has never quite mustered the confidence for.

“What would I do?” Jimmy smiles one of those slow, in-charge smiles. “Get you out of your clothes, for a start. Get you down on your knees for a bit, maybe. Then…”

Jimmy looks round at the door; Alastair uses the pause – the space to think – to increase the pace of his hand on Jimmy’s hard shaft, eliciting another grunt from Jimmy. The fingers at Alastair’s hip dig in harder, but for the moment the other man’s voice stays steady.

“Then I’d open that door and get you to hold on to the frame…”

Alastair squeezes more firmly – determined to put the other man off his stride, to see if he can – and Jimmy gasps; huffs a laugh, claims Alastair’s mouth briefly, before going on with his low-voiced commentary.

“Fuck it, let’s say that— that _everything we need_ includes rope. So I can tie your wrists. To the frame up there. Arms stretched apart. Hand in each corner.”

Jimmy’s breath is coming shorter now, breaking up his sentences. The hand at Alastair’s hip slips down and round the curve of Alastair’s arse: grabbing, massaging; making it a real struggle to concentrate.

(But concentration’s what Alastair’s _good_ at; and he knows he’s winning this race, can tell by the urgency in Jimmy’s touch and the hint of slickness at the head of Jimmy’s cock.)

Jimmy shoots another quick glance round and back. “See those little poles? Bottom of the doorframe?”

Alastair looks, without letting his pace flag. There’s a gap between the floor and the bottom of the toilet cubicle; the walls are perched on slender metal poles, like stilts, one either side of the door. “Yeah.”

“Bind your ankles to those. Force your legs open. Make you stay put. Not that you, you know… _want_ to get away—” It’s difficult to tell, now, where chuckling ends and panting begins in Jimmy’s voice. “Hard to... when you’re— _Fuck_. I’m close.” Jimmy’s hand dips lower still, to grope between Alastair’s legs; Alastair grits his teeth. “Anyway. You all spread-eagled. Ideal world… nice big full-length mirror. So you can see yourself. When I’m getting you ready. How much you – _ah_ – want—”

Whatever else Jimmy has to say is lost, muttered into Alastair’s shoulder, and abruptly Alastair has a much more slippery grip on Jimmy’s cock. With a glow of satisfaction, he uses his free arm to hold Jimmy steady as the other man shudders through a couple of aftershocks.

At a certain point, Alastair realises the shudders have become something else: Jimmy’s shaking, now, with silent laughter.

“What?” he splutters, a little put out that Jimmy’s failing to acknowledge his victory.

“Can’t believe,” whispers Jimmy, “we’ve sneaked out to wank each other off in the middle of cooking a charity dinner at Lord’s.”

He lifts his head and makes a move to kiss Alastair, but just ends up snorting with laughter. This sets Alastair off, although he brings himself back under control long enough to say, “Each other, eh? So far, only one of us has actually—”

Jimmy barks another laugh: too loud in the tiled room, too merry to silence. He wastes no time; the first touch on Alastair’s straining cock washes away laughter, forcing him to bury his face against the side of Jimmy’s neck, to hold in a moan.

“Your turn,” Jimmy says.

“About time,” Alastair manages.

“Not this. I mean, yes this, but…”

“What, then?”

“Your turn to whisper filthy nothings in my ear.”

Alastair shakes his head, burrowing further into the crook of Jimmy’s neck. “I can’t. Not without giggling.” Also, talking is unwelcome distraction from the main event.

Mock earnest: “ _I_ believe in you.”

“ _Fine_.” Alastair clears his throat. “So you’ve got me in a compromising position. And this is a fantasy, so, magically, we don’t need to mess about with lube for ages and you can just fuck me and it’s, you know… mindblowing. The end.”

Jimmy laughs. “Don’t think you’ve really got the hang of this.”

“Not my forte. Also—”

Jimmy tilts his head; it offers a distractingly good angle on his cheekbones. “Why not?”

“You know why.” Alastair looks away. Jimmy being Jimmy, though, he’s taking things more slowly than Alastair did – lazy strokes of Alastair’s cock, languid kisses – so there’s no way for Alastair to pretend he’s got lost on the way to orgasm. “Embarrassing.”

Jimmy snorts. “More so than standing in a toilet at the home of cricket with your dick in another guy’s hand?”

“Well… No. Not when you put it like that. But either way, my tarts are probably burning, so…”

“So I might beat you, this evening? Sounds like an argument for keeping you waiting a bit longer.”

“You think _everything’s_ an argument for keeping me waiting a bit longer.”

“Only because everything _is_.”

“Do you want me to finish myself off?”

“…No.”

“Well, then.” Alastair hooks a hand behind Jimmy’s neck, draws the other man’s face to his own. “Help me stay quiet?”

“Happily,” says Jimmy – and a few minutes later, Alastair is being kissed through a climax that sneaks up and spreads through the centre of him like a sunrise.

\--

If Jimmy were the sort of guy who whistled, he’d be whistling now as he heads back to the kitchen.

He’s not, though, which is lucky, since he bumps into Broady about half a minute after he leaves the bathroom.

Jimmy nods at him. “All right, hopalong? Managed to autograph all your plates, yet?”

Broady – who has stopped, is leaning on his crutches – doesn’t rise to either jibe, disappointingly. “I’ve taken Cooky’s tarts out of the oven for him.” He smirks. “That sounds a bit rude, doesn’t it?”

Jimmy shrugs. “If you say so.” He’s starting to walk off, when Broady speaks again.

“Jim. Mate.”

Jimmy turns back, slowly. He knows that tone; the smug amusement in it. “…What?”

“Got a bit of something at the corner of your mouth.” Broady adjusts his stance so he can raise a hand and tap a long finger against his own lower lip.

Jimmy resists the urge to wipe his face. “Oh, right. Cheers,” he says, in his blandest voice, as he turns away again.

“Looks like chocolate,” Broady calls after him, and Jimmy doesn’t stop, this time.

\--

Chocolate finally defeated, Alastair rubs his face dry with a ludicrously luxurious paper towel – Lord’s really is a cricket ground apart – and tries to persuade his smile to calm down a bit.

He’s just wiping his chest – it’s mostly fine, but there are a few sticky patches where Jimmy wasn’t quite as thorough – when he hears the door opening. He drops the paper towel and wrenches the two sides of the jacket back across his torso, slapping frantically at the press studs.

It’s a good job Broady’s on crutches; by the time the man’s manoeuvred himself through the door, Alastair has managed to drag himself back from the precipice of half-nakedness.

“Hi!” says Alastair, brightly, jabbing at the lever to lift the plug and empty the sink. “You, uh… you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to get chocolate out of your hair.” He keeps his head down as he turns to leave; with a grin fighting to break out, he knows he’s going to give something away if he meets Broady’s gaze.

“Uh-huh.” Broady uses a crutch to push open the door to one of the stalls. (Not, Alastair’s relieved to note, the one he and Jimmy were just in. They made sure it was spotless, but still.) “I rescued your tarts, by the way.”

Alastair tries not to let it show on his face that he’d more or less forgotten his food. “Oh. Right. Thanks.” He claps Broady on the shoulder, briefly, as he passes. “I owe you one.”

“Nah.”

Alastair looks back, involuntarily, at the warm chuckle that follows this. The other man’s shaking his head, and smiling.

“You’ve done plenty for me, over the years.”

Faintly bemused, Alastair ducks out of the room. As he does, his phone buzzes in his back pocket: a text from Swanny. Alastair deletes it unread, as he has every other message he’s had from the man since the washed-out first ODI. He takes a deep breath; puts it from his mind.

Nothing’s going to hurt his good mood today.

\--

Ali’s cheese and onion tarts win. It’s a blatant fix, of course, and Jimmy says as much to the camera. Once the other man has finished being interviewed, Jimmy sidles up to him and pokes him in the small of the back, then lets his palm linger in the same spot.

Ali dips his head, looks round; the combination of warm half-smile and those eyes peeking out from under thick eyelashes makes Jimmy want to wrap his arms around the man and kiss the nape of his neck.

“Jammy bastard,” he says, instead, moving his hand. He takes a quick swig of his beer. “Just so you know, I was rooting for Hoggy.”

Ali sticks out his tongue. “Just so _you_ know, I didn’t eat any of yours.”

Jimmy folds his arms, tells himself he’s not a bit miffed by this. ( _Miffed_ ’s the wrong word, anyway.) “How come?”

Little bit more colour in Ali’s cheeks. “After the, uh, sneak preview in the bathroom… Didn’t think I could manage any truffles with a straight face.”

They share a smirk. An idea that’s been half forming at the back of Jimmy’s mind all day is suddenly clamouring to be heard. He voices it before he can second guess himself.

“How about… Why don’t we stay here? Well, at the hotel. Tomorrow. An extra night.”

He watches Ali take a breath; his lips start to shape a word, then hesitate.

Jimmy finds himself talking again, to fill the space. (Later, he’ll wonder what made him do this; not exactly his style.) “No training, no press, no captaining.” He lowers his voice. “No clothes…”

Ali’s rubbing his chin, fighting that bashful grin he gets at times like this. “You make a strong argument.”

An interruption: Ali’s being called away to schmooze some sponsors.

“That a yes, then?” says Jimmy, quickly, before Ali goes out of earshot. 

Ali turns back and _there’s_ the bashful grin, out in force. “Yeah. Go on, then.”

Left on his own, Jimmy idly watches Ali make small talk with a trio of besuited men. He can’t hear what’s being said, but the sight will do: the way he throws his head back when he laughs, the way he raises his eyebrows, the way his hands sit on his hips—

“I’m really happy for you two, you know.”

Jimmy takes one look at Broady, who’s leaning against the wall behind him (how long’s he been there?), weight on his good leg, crutches balanced loosely under his upper arms. Doesn’t bother pretending not to know what the other man’s driving at. “Starting to wonder if I should be worried. Amount of time you spend fantasising about my sex life.”

Broady snorts. “You’re giving me plenty of material to work with.”

“Think that says more about you than me.” Jimmy raises his glass; drinks the beer slowly. “Me and Cooky? Come on. I mean, he’s not a bad-looking bloke, if you like that sort of thing” –never hurts to seed a lie with a bit of truth— “but what’ve we got in common?”

Broady’s raised eyebrow is practically dripping with irony. “You mean _apart_ from the fact that both of you’ve only got eyes for each other, like… ninety percent of the time?”

“Bollocks,” mutters Jimmy, but he can feel his face growing hot. He takes a couple of steps back, until he’s beside Broady, against the wall, and there’s some distance between them and the people milling around nearby.

( _Why here_ , he thinks, _why did I decide to have this conversation in the middle of the fucking Long Room_?)

“You look at him like he’s… I don’t know, like he’s a dream come true.” Broady chuckles, carelessly. “Don’t worry, most people miss it, I’m sure. But it’s pretty obvious if you know what to—”

“Keep your _bloody_ voice down.” Jimmy makes himself relax his grip on his pint glass.

And there it is. He’s stopped denying it. He’s expecting a pause, a bit of quiet while Broady clocks this revelation, and digests it.

Yeah, right.

“So how long—”

“If you say a _word_ about this, to anyone.” Jimmy turns so he’s facing away from the rest of the room (facing away from Ali). “ _Anyone_. Even a hint, and we’re not friends anymore.”

Sparkling blue eyes widen in a look of injured innocence that Broady long ago learned not to try using on Jimmy out in the field. “But…”

“I mean it.”

“Ah, come on.” Broady’s tone is still too light; casual, like this is just some everyday gossip they’re sharing. ( _Sharing_ might be overstating things; as a rule, Broady gossips, Jimmy sort of half-listens.) “What’s the big deal? You spend more time with each other than either of you do with your wives. It’s pretty natural that—”

“Wives. Magic word. _Wives_.” That, at last, has an impact; probably the cold fury that does it. Jimmy swallows, hard, trying to get himself back under control. “I’ve got a family. This gets out, it hurts me. And that’s, well… I deserve it. But it does a lot more than that to them.”

This time, Jimmy gets his silence. He’s not sure it’s an improvement, exactly. When Broady finally speaks again, his voice is soft.

“If it bothers you that much, the risk and everything… and I get what you’re saying, I do. But in that case – why not stop?”

“Stop.” Jimmy’s chest feels, suddenly, very tight. He can’t find any words, not the ones he wants (doesn’t know the words he wants), and the bottom of his pint glass isn’t helping. “Uh… right. Yeah. Right.”

He mumbles something about getting some air. Puts his half-empty glass down on the nearest table. Narrowly avoids upsetting it over a startled-looking woman. Wades through the crowd in search of a door.

Escapes.

\--

The walk down the pavilion steps is a familiar one, even if Jimmy doesn’t normally do it in the dark. He watches where he’s treading, just in case, and that helps him not to think too hard about Broady’s words.

Sort of helps.

 _Why not stop_ , Broady said, like it was that simple, like he knew anything about what that meant, what _any_ of it means. The other man doesn’t understand; how could he?

It’s just sex, anyway. (Mostly just sex.) As long as it stays secret – as long as Broady keeps that big mouth of his shut – there’s no need for it to stop, is there?

Jimmy takes a deep breath, and pushes all this aside; focuses on where his feet are, on the tap of his shoes against the concrete. The last thing he needs is to go head over heels out here and land himself with an injury. He used to have a recurring dream about doing just that.

You never feel completely at home here; anyone who says otherwise is lying. Lord’s is its own world, with its own history and its own rules, and everything you do here just seems to matter that little bit more. But there’s comfort in the familiar and there’s comfort in history, too; in memories of being applauded down and up these stairs, in the awareness of how long this place has stood, of how long people like him having been coming here. A handful of them achieving great things, but many more of them falling short of their hopes, whatever those hopes may be.

As he finally runs out of steps, and has to look up – at the dew-silvered grass of the outfield, at the rows of members’ seats beside him and the profusion of balconies and red brick behind – it occurs to him that there’s another way to put it: this place has forgotten more mistakes than he’s ever made.

There’s some comfort in that, too. Perspective. Makes it easier – a little – to admit to being wrong.

Because he is, of course; Broady’s right. If Jimmy cares, really _cares_ , about the effect of this affair on his family, he should end it. Should give Ali up, before anyone gets hurt.

But that thought hurts, too. A pressure in his chest, unwelcome; insistent. An image of Ali, this afternoon: eyes half-closed, traces of chocolate still painting his scarlet cheeks, blissed-out smile. The quiet sound of his laughter; the warmth of his arm hooked around Jimmy’s neck.

Jimmy climbs over the gate with its MCC crest, lands lightly on the turf that he somehow can’t stop his brain from labelling _hallowed_. (Some commentators’ clichés are hard to escape, even when you’re a player.) He crouches down, presses his hands against the damp grass. A chill to wake him up, soaking into his skin.

He _should_ end it. But the damage is already done. The upbringing for which Pup sneeringly dubbed him _Altar Boy_ has left no room for comforting ignorance on that score. Even if Jimmy never touches Ali again, even if Dani never finds out, it won’t wipe out what he’s done. Even if the whole thing had remained in his imagination, never acted upon; even then.

There are many flavours of sin; he learned this young. Desiderium, for example: the desire to do a sinful thing. A sin in itself.

But he was also taught that, to earn forgiveness, you need to be sorry. Which means that he has to ask himself: _is_ he?

( _You look at him like he’s a dream come true_ , Broady said.)

Jimmy isn’t sure he knows the answer, anymore. Maybe that – he decides, as he hears the footsteps and the strategic throat-clearing behind him, and stands, leaving two perfect, dark handprints on the silvered grass of the outfield as he turns to face Ali – is answer in itself.

Because the truth – the unvarnished, awful, inescapable truth – is that if this man is temptation, Jimmy doesn’t want to resist.

\--

Alastair slows as he reaches the bottom of the steps, waiting for Jimmy to turn; waiting to see his expression. If he’s hoping for a clue to the other man’s mood, though, he’s disappointed. There’s a brief, tantalising flicker of something – a tightness around his mouth, and around eyes that are open wider than usual – but it’s gone too fast to read.

“Everything okay?” he says. “You left a bit… abruptly.”

Jimmy is still, for a long moment. The moonlight makes him look a little like a sculpture, and Alastair tries to work up a crack about his hair being so full of product it might as well be carved from marble anyway. He doesn’t quite get there before Jimmy speaks.

“Broady knows.”

It takes a moment for the words to sink in, but Alastair’s stomach has already dropped, like his body understood before his brain did. He reaches for the gate between them; wants something solid to brace against.

“How…?” His thoughts scatter, helplessly, like grouse driven from cover by a dog they never saw coming. “What did he say?”

Jimmy’s hand is over the top of his own. It’s wet. Why is it wet? Alastair looks down at it, confused, and Jimmy moves it, quickly, withdrawing to his own side of the gate.

“I’ve sworn him to secrecy.”

With an effort, Alastair pulls himself back from the fragile, futile contingencies spooling through his head: how he might explain; how he might make amends. He’s already spoken to his wife today; invented an excuse for why he’s staying on tomorrow. It was disturbingly easy, then; feels much less so now.

His heart is beating very fast. “You know him best.” He tightens his grip on the gate. “Do you trust him to keep the secret?”

Again, Jimmy goes still. His answer is an agonisingly long time in coming. “Yeah. He’s a loud mouth, but he’s not stupid. Think he got the message.”

And Broady looks up to Jimmy like a big brother; always has. Surely, then—

Alastair releases a held breath. “But how did he— Did _you_ tell him?” He doesn’t believe that, but he’s floundering to make sense of things. “About us?”

Jimmy’s eyes widen, again. “ _No_. Definitely not.” He shrugs, and Alastair sees helplessness in a gesture he’s used to reading as detachment. “He… worked it out.”

“Worked out…” Alastair wets his lips, glimpsing the other thing that’s worrying him: how this might change things between him and Jimmy. “What did he say?”

“He said…” Jimmy shifts; frowns down at the gate. “He said we look at each other a lot. Which, well.” He glances back up, the faintest ghost of a smile on his lips. “I guess we… weren’t that subtle. Today.”

Alastair huffs a laugh; partly out of relief, at the lightening of Jimmy’s tone. Partly out of a growing sense, as his alarm recedes and he lets himself believe that Broady will stay quiet, of the absurdity of the situation. “Do you mean the part where we had a food fight, or the part where we sneaked off to the loo for half an hour?”

“It wasn’t half an hour. Fifteen minutes at the _most_.”

“Yeah, I know how long those tarts needed, and it wasn’t fifteen minutes.”

Broady took them out of the oven, Alastair remembers then. He covered for the two of them, when he didn’t have to, and when Alastair bumped into him he didn’t even make a snarky comment about it.

Even so. Even if they do get away with this, they’ve come very close to getting in real trouble. It’s a reminder; overdue, perhaps. So Alastair makes himself say the thing he doesn’t want to, before Jimmy does.

“Maybe this means we should… you know, cool it for a bit. To be on the safe side.”

Jimmy shrugs, and again it isn’t his usual shrug, not at all. “Two months until the next tour,” he says. “That’s plenty cool enough. Besides, I’ve already paid for an extra night in the hotel. I mean, either way I’m not really planning on actually _using_ it, but… well. I’d rather the reason I’m not using it is because I’m with you.” He clears his throat. “Like, in bed with you.”

“I was taking the bed part for granted,” Alastair says, drily, but he’s got a smile he can’t contain and there’s a fluttering in his chest like he’s got a bird caged in there and even though he shouldn’t, he’s reaching across the gate, to brush his fingertips against Jimmy’s hand. Then he pauses. “Why _are_ your hands wet?”

Jimmy glances behind him. “The grass. Dew.”

“You been bathing your face in dew? Or whatever it is you’re meant to do to keep yourself looking young, I don’t know, one of those tales, innit…” Alastair knows he’s babbling; his thoughts still haven’t really settled properly.

“Bit late for me,” says Jimmy, then abruptly he reaches over the gate and clamps damp palms against Alastair’s cheeks. Alastair flinches away, laughing, but Jimmy’s hands follow him and a thumb swipes twice across his forehead, leaving a cool trail behind. “You’re well worth preserving, though.”

Jimmy’s hands drift down to cup Alastair’s face, and this time they stay where they are. Before this can become something it shouldn’t – certainly not in public, and preferably not at all – Alastair takes a step back, and opens the gate. “Fancy making an early start on our day of debauchery?”

Jimmy smiles. “Lead on, skip.”

\--

Leaving together seems unwise, all things considered, so Ali – who’s in demand, as usual – sends Jimmy back to the hotel first. It’ll give him chance to satisfy the sponsors that he’s put a shift in, he says. Jimmy’s not entirely happy with this; not so much because he reckons Ali has already done plenty today (although he does), but because he’s not sure being left alone with his thoughts is ideal just now. But after a token protest, he keeps his mouth shut and calls himself a taxi.

Flicking TV stations back in his room, he finds a random James Bond film – he can’t remember the name of it, one with Roger Moore and a space shuttle – to keep his mind off all the obvious things until he gets a text from Ali ( _room 515_ ) and then a second ( _bring some music_ ).

He’s already laid out clothes for tomorrow. The extra night isn’t a problem, clothing-wise; he builds in redundancy when he travels, so he can dress for the mood he’s in. He forces himself to pick up the bundle without looking through it again, pushing aside last-minute doubts about what message he’s sending with the plain grey t-shirt and the new-favourite skinny jeans. Casual, that’s the goal; an outfit for a day of lounging around. He’s not anticipating wearing it much, anyway.

He collects his mp3 player and his phone charger, and – after some hesitation, white noise in his head – his toothbrush and a few other things for the morning. The black pouch he’s already slipped inside the bundle of his clothes.

He’s surprised, as he pauses at the door (looking back at this room he won’t sleep in), by how nervous he suddenly feels.

\--

If Broady had said anything – anything loud, anything direct, anything smirky – when Alastair was making his farewells, he might well have lost his nerve. But all he got was a quick one-armed hug and a whispered, “Have fun,” in his ear, so he could head for his taxi feeling reasonably secure that everything wasn’t going to blow up behind him.

He still isn’t completely settled, though. It was different, when Swanny found out. Alastair was close enough to Swanny – they both were – that it felt strange for Swanny _not_ to know; but Swanny was also enough of an outsider – not in the team anymore, not getting drunk and gossipy in the dressing room – that he was safely walled off.

But Broady’s a teammate. Someone Alastair has to captain; someone whose respect Alastair needs. It’s too early to tell how this development might affect that, but there can be no doubt it will.

The knock at the door is, as so often, a relief: distraction.

Alastair’s ready to jump on Jimmy as soon as he opens the door – better that, much better that, than talking – but the other man turns out to have his arms full of stuff.

Alastair blinks. “Moving in?” he says, and then instantly regrets it.

Jimmy just looks sheepish, though, as he steps inside. “I’m high maintenance, all right. Or my hair is.” He moves past Alastair, pauses, then makes a beeline for the empty counter by the TV.

“You don’t need to faff about with your hair on my account. _I’m_ not bothered.”

Judging from the silence that follows as Jimmy arranges his burdens on the counter, Alastair is two-for-two on things he shouldn’t have said.

 _Spectacular start_ , he thinks; out loud, he tries, “Wine?”

Jimmy grunts, without looking round, and Alastair busies himself with pouring out rich, dark red wine. He picked up the bottle on his way in, from the hotel bar. More expensive than he’d generally go for, but he asked for a recommendation and it would’ve been rude to turn it down.

“Three glasses,” says Jimmy, the sound of his voice nearer than Alastair is expecting. A hand settles in the small of Alastair’s back. “Something you’re not telling me?”

“Well, you know, thought I’d spice things up a bit. We’ve got all day tomorrow, after all, wouldn’t want you to get bored…”

Alastair trails off when he feels the hand drop away; glances up, catches sight of Jimmy’s face. Jimmy’s pale, not even slightly amused face.

“Shit.” Alastair fumbles as he puts the bottle down; winces at the _clank_ as it meets the table a bit too forcefully. “That wasn’t—” He lifts his head, closes his eyes, takes a deep breath. “Sorry. Can we… Can we start again from the part where you come in? I think I need another run at—”

Cool hands slide into place at his jaw and his cheeks, cupping his face. Like they did outside the pavilion at Lord’s. Fingertips push up past his hairline, and his face is drawn down.

Jimmy’s jaw works for a moment before he speaks. “Kiss me.”

Alastair presses his mouth against Jimmy’s, hard. It’s a long while before he can even bring himself to move his lips, so strong is his conviction that this contact is the only thing holding everything in. Once he does, Jimmy takes the lead, and the kiss turns slow and deliberate and soothing.

“I’m sorry,” Alastair says, again, the first chance he gets. “This is… I keep going back and forth…”

“Broady?”

“Yeah. It’s not even about him, particularly. It’s just… the reminder, I guess.” He can’t spell it out. The risk they’re taking. “You know?”

“I know.” Jimmy gathers him in, then: one arm coming around Alastair’s back, the other up around his shoulders; a hand cradling the back of Alastair’s head. “I’ve got you.”

Alastair lets himself be held, even returns the embrace – but he makes sure he’s holding on less tightly than Jimmy is, alert to the many and exciting ways he could mess this up even more, from here.

“Do you want to leave it, for this evening?” says Jimmy, after a while. “Or, you know, like you said before… cool it off, for a while?”

(Later, just before he falls asleep, Alastair will wonder if Jimmy’s voice really was as steady and casual as it seemed, when he asked this question; but it’ll be too late to remember it properly.)

“No.” In some ways this is the worst part; even reminded of the danger, Alastair has absolutely no desire to let the other man leave this room. He attempts a chuckle. “Ironic, isn’t it? Feels like the only thing that can help me unwind this evening is… also the thing that’s causing the stress.”

There’s a split-second pause, then Jimmy huffs a laugh; Alastair feels it in the chest pressed against his own. “So you _are_ inviting Broady to join in, then.”

“Nope.” Alastair huffs a laugh of his own, remembering his conversation with the bartender. “Well, not really.”

“A threesome with Broady, for the record, falls in the _definitely not_ category for me.”

“Yeah, me too. Okay, basically, the reason there are three glasses is that I was being my usual, you know, quick-witted self. Downstairs. The guy behind the bar asked how many glasses I wanted, and I knew I couldn’t say _two_ , because he might think I was setting up for some sort of – what’s the word? – _tryst_ —”

"Which you were.”

“Which I was. And _obviously_ I didn’t want him to think that, because what happens if he gossips to a journalist? But then I realised that if I said _one_ , because I could just use a mug anyway and let you have the glass, he’d think I was an _alcoholic_ or something, heading upstairs to pickle myself in a whole bottle of wine. And _that_ wouldn’t be a good story for him to tell, either. So I froze a bit, and then sort of blurted out _three!_ , because, well, it’s plausible that I could just be planning to have a nightcap with you and Broady, all above board and nothing worthy of the tabloids or anything, right?”

Jimmy’s chuckling by the time Alastair’s done. “You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?”

“Well, it’s usually one of two things. Ridiculous man, by any chance?”

“Ridiculous man.”

Jimmy’s smiling as his lips seek out Alastair’s again, and this time the kiss really does shut Alastair’s brain up for a while.

It’s a while, too, before either of them remembers the wine.

\--

Even knowing they have a full day to themselves tomorrow, Jimmy can’t bring himself to put the brakes on. Somewhere in the midst of dragging the other man's clothes off, he manages a quick mouthful of wine, but he barely tastes it, and soon Ali’s backing away towards the bed, pulling Jimmy along by the hand. Then there’s heat and skin and haste, touch and tongues and taste, and Jimmy almost forgets what it is to breathe (even still, after all this time)—

Until he’s pushing inside, into warm tight pressure and the fractured rhythm of Ali’s gasps. The other man’s half-crouching astride the corner of the bed, one foot on the floor and one knee up on the mattress, leaning forward, head hanging, bracing himself white-knuckled against the sheets. Now Jimmy slows, now he breathes; now he savours.

Until Ali’s gasps become soft laughter, and dark eyes cast a teasing glance over a shoulder. “Forgotten what to do?”

Jimmy trails his fingertips up Ali’s back, touch light enough to tickle. “Just enjoying the moment. It’s been two weeks.”

“Eleven days.”

When Jimmy’s hand gets to the nape of Ali’s neck, he reaches round to hook the other man’s jaw; hauls Ali’s head up, forcing him to arch his back, slowly, until he has the other man’s mouth right where he wants it. Leans down to breathe against his lips: “That’s basically two weeks.”

He kisses Ali hard, then; starts to rock his hips, feels the other man groan into his mouth. “You feel so good,” Jimmy whispers, but Ali just closes his eyes and mutters, “Harder; _please_ ,” so Jimmy gives him what he wants, fast and deep.

When Jimmy eventually lets go of Ali’s jaw, some while later, Ali’s arms give way beneath him and crumples forward onto the bed. Both feet off the floor, now, face down on the rucked sheets with his arms splayed and his moans only slightly muffled, jolted with every thrust, Ali presents a picture of complete abandon – of total submission and need.

Jimmy thinks, again, about temptation and desire and consequences; but also of how lucky he is to have this, even if only for a little while.

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Chance to Dine was/is a real thing, and yes, the 2014 edition really did involve a food fight between Jimmy and Cooky. Waitrose's [video of the day is here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP1--X77W7Q), and I've reblogged photos and a gifset (thanks, cricket fam!) in [the obvious tag here](http://kutubiyya.tumblr.com/tagged/chance-to-dine). Look at Cooky with chocolate smeared on his face - how could you _not_ fic that?
> 
> Tom McRae (source of this part's epigraph) is great, if you like gloomy, clever, mordantly funny singer-songwriters. [Here's a live version of my favourite of his songs, with audience participation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s05_VKn8u4A).


	2. Chapter 2

It’s the light that wakes Alastair, as it often is.

(Light means morning means things to do; but not today.)

It’s the sight of the man lying beside him that keeps him awake, though.

Jimmy at rest: no frown, no glower, no sigh; no smirk, no grin, no teasingly raised eyebrow. Over the past eight years, Alastair’s seen these expressions a lot. They’ve become his friends, in a way, each a crucial part of Jimmy; keys to understanding and predicting the man and the teammate. In recent months, Alastair’s been able to add a few more to the list. The glance away that means he’s hiding something. The openly admiring stare.

(Looking back, he’s fairly sure that last one isn’t new. He just didn’t know what it was, before.)

The expression Alastair’s only just got acquainted with, though, is this one. Relaxed Jimmy, contented Jimmy; Jimmy with his face smoothed free of care. In this form, it’s a face Alastair can safely appreciate, memorise the lines of, without worrying he’s giving something away.

Instead, he can worry about something else: that he’s turning sleeping Jimmy into a blank canvas, a surface for projecting feelings onto. Alastair can look at Jimmy’s face and remember last night and wonder if there was anything more to the silences, the caresses, the concern.

He knows, really, that there wasn’t, isn’t; that for Jimmy this is just sex, just fun, just simple. But it isn’t _just_ anything, for Alastair. And with two months stretching out ahead of him and the too-drunken, too-public PCA awards dinner the only chance to see Jimmy before they leave for Sri Lanka, Alastair isn’t sure, anymore, how much longer he can keep this up. He’s used to missing Alice when he’s on tour; it’s an ache, it always will be, but he’s lived with it for eight years. What he isn’t used to – what he’s not prepared for, what he fears – is missing Jimmy, when he’s at home.

Because if that happens, this thing between them becomes something more, doesn’t it? Something defiantly not-simple. A complication, rather than a distraction.

But he’s getting melodramatic, now; letting his imagination get out of hand. He should take this day for what it is – indulgence – and enjoy it. It’s in this spirit – he tells himself – that he shuffles up to the other man, nudges him. Jimmy doesn’t stir, but he does shift, rolling slightly and settling an arm across Alastair’s chest. Alastair tugs the arm into him, curling himself around it, and sighs as he feels the other man inch closer, with a sleepy grunt.

This is another thing Alastair has learned, recently: whether it’s the lure of warmth, or something else, as long as he’s still mostly asleep, Jimmy will mould himself to fit Alastair.

Why not exploit that? Why not indulge, for a while? There’s nothing to get up for: no checking out, no training, no expectations, no stress.

Just this: bodies, in contact.

\--

It’s an absence that wakes Jimmy up, as it often is.

(A warmth missing from where he dreamed it was.)

It’s sensation that keeps him awake, though.

Jimmy opens his eyes with a flinch and a gasp, tensing as the sensation tells him where the warmth (the body, Ali’s) has gone. Not to the gym, as usual. Somewhere much closer.

Gentle ripples of pleasure drift out from Jimmy’s groin, like he’s sitting in a blood-warm pool, lapped by waves. There’s heat, moisture, the flutter of breath across skin; a lazy, muffled chuckle.

And in the middle of it all, he’s hard, and getting harder.

He looks down, sees the black mop of Ali’s hair. The other man lifts his head; holds Jimmy’s shaft lightly in one hand as his lips slide off it.

“Morning,” Ali says, with an impish grin. “Said I’d wake you up properly one day.”

Jimmy blinks at him, trying to marshal sleep-sodden thoughts into something coherent. “You did.”

“So… should I carry on, or do you want to sleep some more?”

Jimmy closes his eyes, and swallows; it isn’t _fair_ , Ali awake and plotting this, the man’s barely resistible at the best of times and Jimmy doesn’t have nearly enough defences up this early in the morning.

(Not that he needs defences. Why would he need defences?)

“Go on,” he says, with all the roughness of sleep in his voice, when what he wants to say is _never stop_ , or at the very least _how the fuck are you so chirpy and beautiful at this time in the morning?_ “Long as you don’t mind me basically just lying here in a daze.”

“That’s the effect I’m going for, actually.” Ali dips his head, does something excellent with his tongue, stops, looks up again. “Unless you fall asleep. You’re in trouble if you fall asleep.”

Jimmy gets halfway through saying, “Not likely,” when he’s assaulted by a yawn. Ali smirks, but gets back down to business.

Jimmy’s tiredness means there’s a lag in the build of his arousal, and Ali seems to have opted for thorough rather than fast: stroking Jimmy’s inner thighs with warm hands, lathing every inch of Jimmy’s cock with his tongue, sucking slowly on his balls. In other words, it’s Jimmy’s turn for impatience to creep in; Jimmy’s hands that are curled to fists in the sheets, Jimmy who’s shifting against the mattress and choking back moans.

At last, he props himself up on an elbow, squinting down the bed at the other man.

This time when he looks up, Ali’s grin is edging on devilish. “Something wrong?”

Jimmy grunts. “Get my revenge, later. Long, drawn out, deeply frustrating revenge.”

Ali braces his hands against Jimmy’s thighs and pushes himself upright, leaning in for a kiss that Jimmy grudgingly allows. (He stops begrudging it almost immediately. Pretends otherwise.)

“Worth it,” Ali says, sunnily. “For your grumpy face. Taste of your own medicine. It’s almost cute.”

“You’ve no idea,” Jimmy mutters, and he could be talking about any of it and none of it; brain still too foggy for sense, he doesn’t even know himself. He laces his fingers through Ali’s hair and holds him tightly, for a second kiss.

“Tell me what you want,” Ali says, after, voice low; hooded gaze sliding back and forth between Jimmy’s eyes and his lips.

“You mean apart from you?”

Jimmy didn’t mean to say that. But it brings some extra colour to Ali’s cheeks.

“More specific,” says Ali. “I want to hear it.”

(He's learning.)

This, at least, Jimmy can do; can’t he? He brushes his lips across those warming cheeks, and gives voice to the images that are rarely far from his mind.

“I want your mouth on my cock,” he murmurs. “Just your mouth, no hands. I want you to take me all the way in, I want you to wring out every last drop. I want to _hear_ how much you’re enjoying it.” He feels the rhythm of Ali’s breathing change, get faster and shallower, and smiles. “And then… then I want to make you wait to come, all fidgety and needy, until after breakfast.”

Ali’s lips are parted. “Fuck,” he says softly, a ghost of his earlier grin still playing at his lips. “ _Fuck_ , you’re good at this.”

“I know.” At last, Jimmy feels like he’s found his footing. He releases Ali’s hair and sinks back against the bed. Soon Ali’s quiet moans are hanging in the air between them, like a low hum of static. From time to time, Jimmy lets his own join them.

\--

Mission – emphatically – accomplished, Alastair is pottering around the room and pondering putting the kettle on when he hears Jimmy mutter something unintelligible into the pillow he’s got his head buried in. Alastair puts down his half-empty glass of water by last night’s wine bottle – which is sealed, sort of, with the stopper Jimmy just happened to have in his overnight bag, because that’s the kind of man he is, apparently – and goes over to find out what’s up.

It’s a trap; he finds himself pulled down beside Jimmy.

“What are y—”

“I’ve seen the clock.” Jimmy's head drops back to the pillow, but he doesn’t loosen his hold on Alastair’s waist. “You’re not tricking me out of bed yet.”

Alastair wriggles his way onto his back; anything else is a bit uncomfortable, while he’s still turned on. “Okay, but—”

“Nope.”

“You don’t even know what I’m going to say!”

“Still nope. No earthly reason to be up this early on a day off.”

Alastair wriggles again, and is secretly pleased when Jimmy’s arms tighten around him.

“Give it up.” Jimmy shuffles closer – not that there’s much distance left to close – and tucks his chin against Alastair’s shoulder. “I’m not waking up to find out you’ve sneaked off to the gym or something.”

“Waking up…” Alastair cranes his neck in an effort to frown at the other man. “Wait, you’re going back to _sleep_?”

Jimmy’s got his eyes closed, and a smile whose contentment can only be described as mocking plastered across his face. “After I got so rudely interrupted, earlier.”

“Yeah, ‘cause you hated every minute.”

The only answer Alastair gets to that is a kiss pressed into the muscle at the side of his neck. It makes him bite his lip, even so, and curl his toes; gleeful satisfaction at a job well done.

“I don’t know if this hotel even _has_ a gym,” he says, a few minutes later.

(Settling down is hard when you’re, well, hard.)

“Confident you could find one, somewhere.”

“Think there might be a pool, though. Hey, we could go swimming.”

“Sure. Some time that isn’t now.”

The next time Alastair says something, he gets what sounds like a very pointed snore out of Jimmy.

\--

Breakfast is bacon rolls. After they’re done, Ali gathers grease-spotted napkins and Jimmy waits for his chance, circling behind Ali until he can pin him against the table.

“You know… the reason I went to get breakfast was so you wouldn’t have to put on any clothes. And yet…” Jimmy lets his fingertips drift down over Ali’s bare stomach, to slip just inside the waistband of his dark-blue pyjama bottoms.

Ali’s breath hitches. “And there I was thinking you were just being a gentleman.”

Leaving his fingers just inside the pyjamas, under the elastic, Jimmy starts to draw his hands slowly and gently around Ali’s hips. He feels the skin twitch under his touch. “You know me better than that.”

“I should, shouldn’t I?”

Jimmy’s hands reach the curve where Ali’s back meets his arse. He slides the pyjama bottoms down, steadily, until the cleft between Ali’s buttocks is clearly visible; leaves them there, held in place by clinging elastic, and leans back to admire the view.

He’d give a lot, he decides, to take a photo just now. To capture the image, the moment.

He realises Ali is watching him over his shoulder, and for once Jimmy can’t read his expression at all.

He tries to explain. “You’re beau—”

“I know.” Ali looks away. “So you keep saying.”

 _Only because it’s true_ , Jimmy thinks, leaning back in to kiss a path down the bare, muscled expanse of Ali’s back.

\--

“You can’t tell half a story.”

Alastair rolls his eyes, feigning impatience, and shifts onto his back. He doesn’t even know how they got onto this topic. One minute everything’s pleasantly post-coital, then one off-hand remark about how Jimmy’s hair has come a long way in the past ten years, and he’s getting interrogated.

“How do you even _remember_ what my hair used to look like? Thought you weren’t _bothered_...”

Alastair sighs. “I had a bit of a thing for you, way back. Way, way back, before we actually met. But then you turned out to be a dick, so I went off you.”

“And?”

“And what?”

Jimmy pokes him. “You’re skipping over _key_ details, here.”

“ _Fine_. Okay.” Alastair lifts his head just far enough to scrub a hand through his hair. He can feel a smile tugging at his lips: some sort of deadly combination of nervous embarrassment and the afterglow of an orgasm he’s spent almost two hours waiting for. “Remember when you made your international debut? For a while there were photos of you everywhere and you were an exciting talent and people talked about how you were spiky and difficult and… Yeah. My first ever crush was a seamer, so—”

“Oh?” Jimmy’s lying _just_ about close enough that Alastair can feel it when he goes still. “Who?”

Alastair waves a hand, lazily, in the air. “No-one you know. Will, he was called; tall, big shoulders, not that good looking, not like you, but he liked making me laugh. He was aggressive to everyone, including me. Bit of a prick, really, if I’m honest, but I felt like I saw a different side of him when we were on our own, and for a year or so we spent all our free time training and playing together. He quit cricket when we were eighteen, to go to university instead.”

Now that he’s started, it all comes flooding back: the long, sun-drenched (and sometimes plain drenched) hours in the nets, the way the steady march of August ate away at the length of those final days, the pitch losing the light earlier and earlier each evening.

Flooding back, and spilling out. “Said he wanted a career, something that’d keep him going past thirty. Looking back, I think maybe someone had a quiet word with him that summer – that he got told he wasn’t good enough. At the time, I was devastated.” He forces a laugh, pre-emptively; defensively. “His last match, his parents were away, so we went back to his house and got drunk.”

Jimmy coughs, in a way that’s clearly an attempt not to laugh. “Bet that didn’t take long.”

“Not really. Half a can of lager and I was gone.” Alastair can see it in his mind’s eye, what he must have looked like; awkward, naïve, smiling too much. “All geared up to kiss him. Chickened out, obviously. Told myself he probably wasn’t… you know. Interested.”

Jimmy snorts. “Course he was. Bet he was pining. _Oh, why won’t Cooky kiss me_?” Jimmy’s tone is high-pitched, teasing, but there are also gentle fingertips tracing the soft edge of Alastair’s ear. “Bet you broke his heart.”

“Doubt it,” says Alastair, wryly. “He’s married now.”

He freezes as his brain catches up with his mouth; too late. His heart hammers. Jimmy’s fingertips have stopped moving. The only sound is a couple of cleaners calling to each other in the corridor outside.

Alastair pulls away from Jimmy’s touch. “ _Anyway_ , so because my first crush was a seamer, I was fully prepared to have a crush on you, too. I had a bad habit of forming impossible crushes.” _Had?_ he thinks; _have, more like_. “But then a couple of years later we met on the field and you called me a cunt and everything and I was, like, okay. Never mind then. Didn’t like him anyway.”

“We didn’t get off to the best start, did we? Told you before, I was pretty stupid back then.” There’s a long pause, and Alastair’s just thinking he’s finally clear of this when Jimmy adds, “Presumably at _some_ point you changed your mind…?”

Alastair laughs, genuinely this time. “You’ve already heard that tale. Let’s just say the naked photoshoot made up for a _lot_.”

\--

Jimmy should’ve known he was never going to get Ali to sit still (ish) in one room all day. The man’s enthusiasm for the prospect of swimming is infectious, though, and Jimmy finds himself googling for somewhere nearby that’ll sell him a pair of swimming shorts. (Ali, he knows without needing to ask, never goes anywhere without swimming gear, just in case.)

Shorts acquired, he heads for the pool. Halfway there, his phone rings.

Swanny, as is his way, doesn’t bother with hello. “I’m delighted that you two had fun yesterday, but you might want to pull back _slightly_ on the whole painting Cooky with chocolate in _public_ thing, you know?”

“Yeah, speaking of being in public—” Jimmy offers a tight smile to the receptionists as he strides – or maybe _scurries_ would be a better word – across the hotel lobby, praying that the sound of Swanny’s voice isn’t carrying too far. “Can’t really talk…” Jimmy trails off as thoughts occur, about how Broady could have found out the secret; thoughts and suspicions. Swanny spilling the beans seems more likely than Broady just spontaneously working it out. “How do you _know_ about that?”

“There are photos on twitter. Cooky looks good in chocolate, although of course he would—”

On the one hand, it’s a plausible explanation that doesn’t involve his best mate breaking a confidence; on the other hand, the word _photos_ has an ominous ring to it. Jimmy stops stock still in the dark, narrow corridor to the pool, swallowing back dread. “There are… _what_?”

“Photos. From the kitchens at Lord’s. Remember, you were cooking? Allegedly, at least.”

Jimmy closes his eyes, releases a sigh of relief. “Right. Yeah.” He doesn’t hear the next thing Swanny says, only the last few words of it.

“… _Is_ he?”

Jimmy’s leaning back against a wall, now; realises for the first time that he can smell chlorine, and smiles at nothing in particular. “Is who what?”

“Cooky. Is he okay?”

Jimmy shrugs. (He wishes he could stop doing that when he’s talking on the phone.) “Yeah, he’s fine,” he says, briskly. Ali’s not one hundred percent, yet, and – like Jimmy – he was clearly unsettled by Broady’s big reveal last night; but there’s none of the rawness, the brittleness, that there was a month or so ago. “Been a tough summer, but that’s all behind him, now.”

 _Even if he isn’t_ , he thinks, _I wouldn’t be telling you. Not anymore_.

(This is a thought that hurts.)

As if he’s read Jimmy’s mind, Swanny says, quietly, “Has he mentioned me?”

No way to sugar-coat this; so Jimmy doesn’t try. “No.” When Swanny starts to say something else, Jimmy talks over him, quickly. “And don’t ask me to get involved, okay? It’s between you two.”

“But he needs people to _talk_ to – with everything that’s coming up, he needs _friends_ —”

“He does.”

A long silence on the other end of the line. Jimmy breaks first.

“Look, just… give him time.”

He hears Swanny draw in a long breath. “You’re right. He’s not going to bear the grudge forever, is he.”

Hint of a question at the end of that remark. Jimmy sees the trap, but lets himself fall into it anyway. “Exactly. He’s stubborn, but he’s not KP.”

A ghost of a chuckle. “And we can _all_ be grateful for that.”

Jimmy doesn’t bother telling Swanny to apologise; Ali’s not the only stubborn one in this situation. Instead, he makes his excuses, says his farewells, and hangs up. Then he stays where he is for a few moments more, turning his phone over in his hands at he stares at the carpet without seeing it, reminding himself that this is _their_ argument. He’s said his piece and it’s got nothing more to do with him. He’s _not_ putting himself in the middle of it.

When he feels like he can smile again, he goes to join Ali, stripping in the tiny changing room in double-quick time. The other man has the hotel’s small indoor pool to himself; is drifting on his back, with his eyes closed, when Jimmy pads in. Only one thing to do in the circumstances.

Disturb that tranquillity with a dive bomb.

Jimmy’s laughter is cut short when Ali's spluttering segues straight into a standing lunge-jump that drags Jimmy underwater. Then they’re rolling over and over, wrestling, and water's going up Jimmy's nose and he can't bloody well _see_ and oops, look, Ali’s shorts are suddenly halfway down his arse.

Ali backs up, wheezing with laughter as he tries to rescue his dignity. “Public,” he says at last, though his grin is nothing short of gleeful. “Bound to be a camera in here, surely.”

Jimmy paddles slowly towards him. “Then we need to be subtle.”

“Never quite got the hang of that, have we,” says Ali, and it doesn’t sound like a question. Before Jimmy can answer, Ali adds, “Race?”

Ali wins, but he looks so good gliding smoothly through the water that Jimmy can't begrudge him, not one bit.

\--

“How many orgasms do you think it's possible to have in one day?” Alastair says, somewhere between one kiss and another, lying on top of Jimmy, with his shirt already lost on the floor.

They've had a leisurely lunch in the hotel’s quiet bar, the two of them side by side on a table set for four, backs to the wall, Jimmy's hair all dishevelled from the pool and his hand an unsubtle distance up Alastair's thigh. Back in his room, Alastair wasted no time in pulling Jimmy down onto the bed again.

Jimmy shrugs against the mattress, pushes a hand inside the back of Alastair’s open jeans. “Not a clue. Bet the internet can tell us, though.”

Alastair draws in a breath as Jimmy grabs a good handful of his arse. “Another time.” He thinks a moment, as best he can manage, then adds, “Any, uh... any chance I can persuade you it's time to put some music on?”

Jimmy presses his lips together, giving Alastair a considering look. “Pretty good chance, yeah,” he says, with a sharp little tap to Alastair’s arse; meaning inescapable.

Alastair hides his smile in Jimmy’s neck, though probably not quickly enough. He likes the fact that this doesn’t need to be spelled out. It avoids the problem of saying the word _spanking_ , which hasn’t exactly got less embarrassing over time. But also there’s a part of him, still – the talented but gawky boy he’s never quite left behind, the one who always seemed to have too much to do and didn’t make friends as easily as he would’ve liked (but hung on to them for dear life when he did, sometimes longer than he ought to) - that quietly thrills to the idea of being on the inside of a private joke. Even after eight years of friendship with Jimmy, he’s still been nonplussed, from time to time, to find himself included when Jimmy and Swanny get going—

(But Swanny. This isn’t a happy line of thought, not anymore; Alastair doesn’t have the energy for it, so he won’t think it. _Move on_ , he tells himself.)

Put it this way, then: even after three months of sleeping with Jimmy, there’s a part of Alastair that still feels obscurely _proud_ to be the one Jimmy chooses to spend time with. To share these secrets with.

He knows this is ridiculous. Doesn’t make it less true.

“As long as I’m well behaved?” he says, and is proud, too, of how steady his voice is, nothing in it but the knowing smirk the words demand.

“As long as you’re _patient_ ,” says Jimmy – and, well.

Alastair’s already waited years for this man's touch; what’s another hour, after that?

\--

Quid pro quo, really. Ali wants something, he needs to give Jimmy something _he_ wants.

Time.

Time to taste his skin, time to experiment with sensation, time to savour the slow, steady unfolding of desire. Time to be tender and sharp; forceful and yielding.

Time to give as well as take.

Patient or impatient, Ali is never less than fun to watch (or hear). Jimmy needs plenty of fuel for his imagination over the next two months, and he's getting it. As he takes a breather, he lets his fingertips play, idly, across the damp trails of the ice cubes he’s dragged across Ali's nipples and left to melt into pools in the shadows of muscle and bone.

He has a hand, tight, in Ali's thick dark hair; holds the other man still while his other hand wanders lower, tiny fleeting brushes against the softness of Ali’s inner thigh. By the time Jimmy lets these become something more sustained – light stroking, languid circles, whispers across his skin turned to murmurs, but no more, yet – Ali’s shifting, restlessly. The other man lasts a good long while, though, before he finally makes a noise that Jimmy chooses to hear as a whimper.

Now Jimmy leans in, until his face is inches from Ali's. “What d’you say?”

Ali's eyes are dark, unfocused. “ _Please_.”

“Good,” Jimmy says, and takes the kiss he's been waiting for, Ali's mouth yielding completely and his groan a tangible thing.

Some while later he murmurs, “Up. Hands and knees,” and reaches down to the floor for his belt.

\--

The burn has faded to an ache: pain, largely washed away by the heat of release, returning as a mild echo. Alastair wants to get a good look at himself, see what – if any – marks Jimmy has left, but that’d mean leaving the bed. Sod that.

There’s a low buzz in his ear; it resolves into the sound of his name. There are arms around him and a heartbeat under his cheek.

“Back with me?”

Alastair stays quiet. If he pretends he’s still asleep, maybe the snuggling can go on for a bit longer.

“Oh dear,” says Jimmy, musingly. “No answer. Might have to try CPR in a minute. Or tickling.”

Alastair lifts his head, squints at Jimmy through a stray lock of hair. “Thought this was a day off.”

Jimmy leans against the fat pillow beside him, closing his eyes. “Never hurts to check.” He doesn’t, for the moment, let go of Alastair. “Especially when we've done something new.”

“The belt was my idea. And you worry too much.”

“If it's worth doing, it’s worth taking care over.” Alastair feels Jimmy’s fingertips drum briskly against his back. “Can’t believe I'm still having to explain this to captain perfectionist.”

 _Because the idea of you worrying complicates things. Makes this harder._ Alastair can’t say this. Doesn’t want to give Jimmy the wrong idea, like he's hoping for more.

“Best way _I_ know to perfect something,” he says, instead, pushing himself up and away, “is practice. Lots of practice.”

Jimmy grins. “Reckon we can agree on that.”

\--

It’s Ali who first suggests it.

“Steady on,” says Jimmy, as Ali reaches for him again, late afternoon. “You won’t be able to walk tomorrow.”

“Maybe we could switch places,” Ali says, and Jimmy can’t tell how serious he's being; can’t tell, either, how he himself feels about the idea.

But it won’t leave him alone. There was a time when he would’ve relished the thought of a pair of strong, sure hands like Ali’s spreading his thighs, and while he doesn’t miss that time (for all sorts of reasons), he won’t deny that there’s some appeal to the girth of the other man.

And there’s more than one way to switch places.

He spends dinner (the sort of indulgently greasy takeaway they aren’t allowed on international duty, followed by room-service ice cream) plotting. Finding an excuse to delve into the black pouch and tie Ali’s hands to the rails of the headboard isn’t difficult (brat), and the other man looks as good as Jimmy always imagined he would with those arms stretched wide, transparently enjoying every moment as he twists and strains. A note of surprise enters Ali’s voice when Jimmy drags one of his ankles towards the foot of the bed, but he makes no objection, only watches avidly as Jimmy secures a knot around the pale, polished wooden pole at the right-hand corner.

By the time Jimmy has tied off the fourth rope, leaving Ali deliciously spread-eagled and helpless, the other man’s head is pushed back firmly against the mattress, black hair a motley halo against white sheets and dark eyes wide in a flushed face. His toes are tightly curled, his fingers splayed, and his chest is heaving in such a way that Jimmy can’t resist leaning over and scattering kisses (and the odd bite) across it. He strokes Ali’s cock until the other man shifts and tugs against his bonds, all restless twitching muscles and breathy moans as he tries (mostly fruitlessly) to push harder and faster into Jimmy’s grip.

Jimmy stops this and starts again: two, three, four times. Always dangling the promise of more, before snatching it away. The first few times, Ali chuckles as much as he gasps, clearly recognising and relishing the game Jimmy's playing, but there’s an edge of impatience and even a touch of desperation in him when Jimmy withdraws for the final time.

“Sit tight,” he says, and leaves Ali spluttering his outrage while he shuts himself in the bathroom.

Jimmy’s never much enjoyed prepping himself, but he's certainly efficient at it. Has had to be, over the years; not many of the guys who’ve fucked him were willing to put in the time. Hard not to remember them, now, as he turns off the shower and pushes slick fingers inside himself, tugging at out-of-practice muscle; the clumsy and the careless, the eager and the energetic, the ones who just _thought_ they were amazing, and the handful who very nearly were.

And Pup, of course.

Jimmy’s remembering, now – how could he not? – his own first time. He threw up, when they were done. Combination (he deduced, later) of adrenaline and stress and the sight of the condom, afterwards. He hid his reaction from Pup, obviously; could never afford to show weakness.

Not a promising start. But it wasn’t always like that, even if Jimmy eventually realised he found sex more satisfying (in all sorts of ways) when he was in control; if sleeping with Pup often left Jimmy feeling like shit, it wasn’t because of the physical side of things, at least not directly. Still, a small part of him is wondering, tonight, whether he really wants to go back to it - even as a one-off, even as a bit of fun. There are so many memories bound up in the sensations he's starting to get; so many old mistakes and pieces of himself he'd rather leave behind.

Yet he _is_ curious, that he won’t deny. (Curious, and increasingly – happily – preoccupied by the thought of what it'll be like to ride Ali, hard, and how utterly fucking hot tied-up Ali’s going to look while he does it.) He wants to give Ali a chance to experience the other side of things. Maybe this is risky; maybe on some level that risk’s part of the plan, it’s a test, he's letting Ali find out if he (like Jimmy) prefers to give rather than take, if he might be better off finding someone else, someone who’ll let Ali fuck him.

(Jimmy is _not_ imagining that to be Joe, and the thing he isn’t imagining doesn’t hurt, at all.)

A little later, Ali is, clearly, more than a little surprised when Jimmy tears open the condom packet and doesn’t use it on himself.

“But— Are you... _sure_?”

 _Not really_ , Jimmy thinks, but also, _Yes_.

“If you... You know.” He can’t look up, nervous all over again. “Want to try it. Bit of variety.”

“Not quite what I expected. You know, when you did this...” Jimmy feels Ali’s legs tense beneath his own, and glances up to find the other man testing his bonds. All of them, at once. A sight worth the price of admission on its own, as the saying goes. “But I’m on board.”

Jimmy draws a deep breath, sets aside his doubts; straddles Ali with half-forgotten ease, liking the way the other man strains towards him and is checked by the ropes. Slowly, he guides Ali's cock inside him, eliciting a soft but drawn-out cry from the other man and suppressing a grimace of his own at the dull burn of the way he's stretched. Then, once he's more comfortable, he starts to rock his hips.

Jimmy’s concentrating so hard on the pleasure blossoming in Ali’s face that it takes him a while to register the same thing unfurling inside him. Somehow, even after all this time, it still takes him by surprise.

\--

For a long time, Alastair just lets it happen. How could he not: Jimmy’s riding his prone, panting body like that’s what it was made for, and it’s well beyond Alastair to argue with either the fantastically tight heat around his cock or the sight of all that undulating muscle around Jimmy's hips and up his torso. If Jimmy ever dares to suggest again that Alastair’s got the monopoly on beauty, Alastair may just smack him round the head with this memory.

The fact that each time Alastair tries to move more than a few inches, he learns afresh that he _can’t_ just makes the thing more perfect. Being tied to a bed and used like this is a fantasy he never quite knew he had, and with every inch of his over-heated body – from the sheathed part of him buried inside Jimmy to the skin that aches for more whenever the other man so much as breathes across it – he never wants it to end.

But. But every so often Jimmy's face betrays something other than intense focus, and Alastair can’t help but wonder: _there_ , is that the spot? Is it, could he, what if…?

It’s hard. To focus. He manages. Asks Jimmy, tentatively, to untie him. Tentative not because he has any doubt Jimmy will release him – he trusts Jimmy’s caution, always – but because he's loving it, the immobility, doesn’t want to lose it. But this feels suddenly more important; urgent, even.

Then, rubbing his wrists (he likes to feel the marks of the rope, although Jimmy’s caution makes them rare, fleeting): the trickier bit.

“Will you let me— I want to...”

Maybe Jimmy’s seen this coming. His expression is almost inscrutable, but not quite.

“Please.” Alastair remembers a conversation in Southampton, and others. “I won’t pin you down.”

A difference between them. Alastair likes to be confined. Jimmy does not.

This time, there’s more to see in Jimmy’s expression; defences down, or some of them, at least. Desire, and anxiety. Alastair can’t find the words, but he will make this worth Jimmy’s while. He _will_. He props himself up on an elbow, reaches up to hook Jimmy’s neck and kisses the other man, deeply. “I promise,” he says, and let that stand for everything.

Jimmy nods, and they switch places. Jimmy makes to lie face down, but Alastair is gently insistent; wants the other man on his back.

Then Alastair crouches over Jimmy, pushing the other man's thighs up but giving him plenty of room as he painstakingly lines up and pushes back inside, gasping. (How on earth does Jimmy manage to look so relaxed when he does this, when he _feels_ this?) He maintains the space as he searches, changing position; as he asks, over and over again, “Is that it?”

“You don’t have to get it perfect the first time,” says Jimmy, softly, one hand cupping Alastair’s cheek, and Alastair doesn’t bother to answer, because of course he doesn’t _have_ to, but he _wants_ to. He will find that bundle of nerve endings if it’s the last thing he does.

And eventually he succeeds, because when Jimmy next speaks, Alastair can hear it in his voice.

“You shag like you bat, you know.” Eyes closed; a hint of breathless strain.

(It doesn’t feel any different on Alastair’s end, but that doesn’t matter. He'll hold this position all night if he has to.)

“Meaning what?” Alastair glares at Jimmy, though only half seriously, because he's feeling pretty bloody good about himself right now. “Careful – if the answer's _boringly,_ you’re on your own.”

“Nah. With your tongue sticking out.” A beat, then Jimmy’s laughing quietly at his own entirely rubbish joke.

“I hate you,” Alastair mutters, for want of a snappier comeback, then gets his revenge by milking some pretty unusual groans out of Jimmy.

When the other man comes, it’s louder than usual, and with a hand from each of them locked together around his cock. Alastair forces himself to slow down for a moment, to feel the change in Jimmy’s body, which is suddenly relaxed and somehow softer around him; but he can’t hold back for long. Near the end, one arm gives way and he slumps forward against Jimmy, who pulls Alastair in and hungrily seeks out his mouth with his own, drinking down Alastair’s cry.

Alastair isn’t sure how much time has passed when he's roused from a lovely stupor – he thinks that maybe they’ve been clinging to each other, but he can’t be sure and lacks the energy to be embarrassed – by a pointed pat on his backside.

“Enough dreaming,” says Jimmy. “He who wears the condom goes to the bathroom first.”

“Since when?”

“Since always. Basic sex manners.”

Alastair is sceptical, but he doesn’t exactly have a vast fund of experience to draw upon and, to be fair, Jimmy generally does get up first. He nuzzles at Jimmy’s neck. “Do I at least get a kiss first?”

What’s clearly meant as a quick kiss doesn’t stay quick. Several minutes of lazy tongue tango later, Jimmy’s pushing Alastair off and away. “Go,” he says, smiling.

Alastair gives in, though not without a grumble. “Slavedriver.”

Jimmy laughs as he rolls onto his side and drags a pillow under his head.

\--

Jimmy keeps it together until he reaches the shower. Then, on his own again, he can’t hold the thoughts at bay.

Hard not to replay it all: how utterly, unbearably _careful_ Ali was. That and the man's sheer bloody-minded stubbornness; Jimmy was torn between snapping _Forget about my sodding prostate_ and just, sort of... marvelling at him.

Hard not to compare. How things might have been different. If Pup—

He makes himself stop that. Fuck, Swanny’s not wrong. Ali _does_ need friends. Other friends. Not good for anyone to spend too much time with a mardy sod like Jimmy.

The bathroom door swings open, bringing light and a draught with it. Ali’s face hoves into view on the other side of a shower door panel fogged by steam.

“Everything okay?” says Ali. “You’ve been in here ages.”

Jimmy swallows back some apprehension he can’t name; reaches up and swipes a small gap in the condensation. “Fine.”

“You sure? I did okay?”

(Jimmy pushes back an impulse to invite Ali in, to seek some silent support against swirling thoughts; wouldn’t be fair, after all, to give the man the wrong idea.)

“You did great.”

 _For a start, you actually gave a shit about whether I enjoyed myself._ The same couldn’t be said of too many of the others.

(This, of course, is what makes Ali dangerous.)

Ali grins broadly, darts forward to press a noisy kiss against the glass partition, then saunters out, taking something – an ease, a lightness – from the room when he goes.

\--

Alastair has carefully schooled himself not to have any expectations about what may or may not happen next, to the extent of going down to the bar to pick up a couple of bottles of lager – ostensibly just to give himself something to do, although by the time Jimmy emerges from the bathroom, immaculate hair incongruous atop his nakedness, Alastair has almost emptied his own bottle.

Whatever expectations slipped like tiny, quicksilver fish through the net of self-discipline, though, they didn’t include this, soon after Jimmy sits beside him on the bed:

“Have you spoken to Swanny yet?”

Alastair, who was gearing up to scoot closer to Jimmy, freezes. “No,” he says at last, although what he wants to say is _why this?_ and _why now?_

“Been a while. Any chance—?”

“Has he put you up to this?”

“Nope,” says Jimmy. Alastair doesn’t believe this for a minute, especially when the other man shifts against the mattress. “I just h— Wanted to know where things stand, that’s all.”

Alastair can feel Jimmy watching him; waits the other man out, neither replying nor meeting his gaze, until he looks away. Success; but also now he needs a change of subject, quickly. There's one thing he's had on his mind for a good half hour, but haste and annoyance make him launch into it (he'll decide, later, looking back) too abruptly. Too clumsily.

“So, I was thinking,” he says, gesturing into empty air with his beer bottle.

Jimmy grunts. “Sounds risky.”

Alastair lets that go. “I was thinking about whether we could, like... consider, maybe” –this was more coherent in his head, earlier, while Jimmy was still in the shower-- “you know... doing away with the condoms. At some point.” Silence; he adds, in a swift mutter, “Obviously, we can both get our tests done, and everything, first...”

Jimmy lifts his beer to his lips and lowers it again without drinking. “Is this because you didn’t get to loll about in bed afterwards like you usually do?”

Alastair scoffs, not even bothering to point out which of them is most likely to be lolling about in bed, on average. “Well,” he allows, “maybe a bit. It _is_ a faff.” In an ideal world, they could both just curl up together for as long as they wanted. “I just thought, you know, it feels great, but it could feel even better.”

Jimmy shrugs, looking away. “We’ll see.”

Alastair has become well acquainted with the shapes of Jimmy’s boredom, over the years; he knows what the genuine article sounds like, and this isn’t it. He wouldn’t normally push. But tonight, as well as being irritated by Jimmy sort of kind of taking Swanny’s side, he’s on a bit of a high from the sex. This might as well – he’ll reflect, later – be another way of saying stupid. “What’s up?”

“Nothing.”

Alastair folds his arms. “Jim.”

Jimmy’s quiet for a long time. “I just... Let’s not get carried away.”

“Oh.” Alastair regrets that reply as soon as he's made it; he can hear too much of everything he wants to hide in it. “Just a suggestion.” Great, now he sounds petulant.

Jimmy’s tapping the base of the beer bottle against his thigh; Alastair thinks about how cold it must be against bare skin, about the fact that he himself is still fully dressed after the trip down to the bar and that Jimmy hasn’t commented on that.

Then Jimmy goes still, and takes an audible breath. “Look,” he says. “This— this thing between us. I can’t… I can’t give you what you want.”

Alastair feels, abruptly, exposed, like a spotlight has suddenly fixed on him and someone’s thrust a microphone unexpectedly in his hand. He’s got no script for this; for all the time he’s spent worrying about getting caught out, he’s never worked out he’d say. How to dissemble, answer without really answering.

He hasn’t banked, either, on feeling this way when it happened. On panic giving way to... not anger, not quite, but close. After the fun and the exploration and the peacefulness of the day, for it to climax in this—

He tightens his grip around his empty bottle. “And what _do_ I want?” His voice is a little too loud, a little unsteady, like it’s drunk on its own recklessness. “What makes you so sure that you know?”

In his head, after a moment, he adds this: _Because I don’t_.

Jimmy’s posture is awkward, now; he’s hunched, cradling his beer in his lap like he’s regretting his nakedness.

Alastair fills the silence with laugh that is – maybe deliberately – much too brittle. “Don’t worry. I know this is just sex.”

Jimmy sighs. “I'm trying to... draw a line. Some things – stuff like this. They belong to my marriage.”

At that, Alastair wishes he could smooth the jagged edge of his previous comment. Something – guilt, perhaps, or solidarity – makes him ask, “What did you tell her? Your wife.” He can’t quite bring himself to say her name; feels, somehow, as if he doesn’t have the right. “How did you explain, you know... today?”

Jimmy glances at him; once, then away. He doesn’t reply immediately.

“I didn’t. I didn’t have to. The girls are off on some residential thing this week, with school, and she’s away.”

Solidarity cracks. Alastair laughs again, completely without humour.

“I lied,” he says, shaking his head, gaze fixed on his feet as he curls and uncurls his toes inside his socks, over and over again. “I lied to Alice, for this.”

_For you._

Alastair no longer knows what he’s most bothered by: Jimmy, matter-of-fact and impervious, rising above the fray of feeling, so much better at this than Alastair is; or his own idiocy, making him push too hard where he should stay quiet, and bottle things up when he should speak.

They’re both quiet, then for a long time.

Eventually, Jimmy says, “Do you want me to go?”

And here is one more question to which Alastair doesn’t know the answer.


End file.
